“Today is an enormous day, not only for India but also for Star Alliance and the country's aviation business,” said Mark Schwab, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Star Alliance, of which AI is a partner.
With domestic operations of all airlines gradually shifting to T2, the city airport is projected to witness tremendous passenger growth in the coming years, transforming it to a leading aviation hub in the continent.
The domestic operations of national carrier Air India (AI) shifted to Terminal 2 (T2) of the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) on Thursday. Jet airways will be the next to follow AI. Vistara, which started its operations earlier this year, already flies from the new terminal and Spicejet and GoAir are expected to follow later.
The aviation experts said the integration of terminals will lead to several benefits, just like at Japan's Narita airport where international and domestic operations were integrated in 2006. The devolution process brought incremental growth of about one million passengers annually to the airport. The model was replicated at several US, Middle East and European airports, the insiders said.
“Today is an enormous day, not only for India but also for Star Alliance and the country's aviation business,” said Mark Schwab, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Star Alliance, of which AI is a partner.
According to Schwab, for CSIA to have a successful hub-and-spoke model, the theme of “bank of flights” need to be implemented. In aviation parlance, hubs are airports that an airline uses as a transfer point to get passengers to their destination. The bank of flights means that at any given time of the day, a certain number of flights are ready to fly to 20 destinations. The passengers can get transferred in the connecting flight of the network in the shortest possible time. “In the coming days, we will try to fit that system into place vis-a-vis arrival and departure timings of the AI flights,” said Schwab.
INDIA AND STAR ALLIANCE
AI operates 63 flights out of Mumbai, of which 52 are domestic. The airline plans to add many more in the coming months, said the officials. Similarly Star Alliance, with which AI has a tie-up, has 11 member carriers that connect Mumbai with 20 international destinations in 14 countries. The member airlines, including AI, share their resources for mutual benefit and provide better connectivity to the passengers as well.
While addressing the media at T2 on Thursday, AI Chairman and Managing Director Ashwani Lohani said, “With better connectivity and transfer, we hope passengers benefit tremendously, which will then translate into better economics and commerce.”
According to AI Director (Finance) S Venkat, who was among those present, till now AI did not have any proper hub of world scale. The AI passengers were mostly transferred at Dubai or Singapore airports. But Delhi has turned into a major hub for the airline in the last few years. “We hope to replicate similar success in Mumbai,” said Venkat.
He added that though the rentals at T2 are about 15 per cent higher as compared to the domestic terminal at 1A, the growth in the number of passengers in the near future will offset the hike. As per an estimate prepared by AI, the airline sees about 5,000 passenger transfers between international and domestic flights and vice versa at Delhi airport in a day. The airline officials expect that within a couple of years, the number of such transfers will reach to about 3,000 passengers at CSIA.
According to the airport officials, with the time taken for transfer and turn around decreasing, passengers will be attracted to choose flights that connect Mumbai, increasing the passenger flow to the city airport.
Economic impact
According to a study done by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi, on economic impact of CSIA on the national and regional economies last year, the total passenger traffic in CSIA will reach 49 million by 2022-23. Similarly by 2022-23, CSIA will make an annual direct contribution to Maharashtra’s economy in terms of income, which would be around 0.56 per cent of the GDP.
CSIA’s direct plus indirect (multiplier) income contribution to Maharashtra’s economy annually will be 1.61 per cent of Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) by 2022-23. Thus, CSIA’s total income impact (direct plus indirect plus induced) to Maharashtra’s economy will be 4.02 per cent of GSDP by 2022-23.
Benefits for passengers
The new integrated T2 has the enhanced capacity to service 40 million passengers per annum and one million ton of cargo annually. The new terminal that opened earlier this year has the state-of-the-art facilities and advanced technological systems adopted for better functioning and seamless connectivity. The terminal's ‘Jaya He’, which has the country's largest art program for public display at T2, has sourced nearly 7,000 exquisite ethnographic objects.
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